A reaction calorimeter is a tool used by scientists in chemical and pharmaceutical development to measure the amount of energy released or absorbed by a chemical or physical reaction.
It typically consists of a stirred tank reactor of variable size in which the temperature of the reaction mass is monitored and controlled accurately together with all relevant critical process parameters.
Reaction Calorimeters allow the investigation of chemical processes under process-like conditions, providing a full set of information about the scalability and safety of the process.
Depending on the stage of development, various additional information might be relevant and thus, complementary data (e.g. analytical data from IR, HPLC or the like may be collected and integrated with the heat flow data).